The Historian

What is a Community Manager?

They are the person who oversees, maintains and takes responsibility for your business’ presence online in all the forms needed by your company. Such as using many online tools that make it easier for people to listen, interact, engage and collaborate with each other online. Many Social Networking platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, message boards and countless others are becoming increasingly import connections to your customers.

Why do you need a Community Manager?

Your company can stop being reactive and start being proactive. Your CM can actively participate in social media conversations as the eyes, ears and voice of your company to create positive word-of-mouth about your products and services and grow your company’s reputation.Having one person tracking your online reputation and keeping you up to speed on what is happening in your industry is invaluable. Instead of always playing catch up with your competitors, be trendsetter.

A CM can also research ideas, and learn more about what your customers and prospects are saying about their needs and experiences, and about your products and related areas. When this person becomes aware of something happening online among your audience, they will draw on the expertise and knowledge from within the organization to provide information to your customers. By analyzing your social media campaigns and translating the anecdotal data into recommendations you can gain new market and competitive insights to improve your products and services.

Some things to keep in mind:

Your community isn’t online from only 9 to 5. Communities never sleep, never take the weekend off and never take holidays or vacations. Being a CM is a very time-consuming job and the results are not always tangible and visible, though your CM should be able communicate what is happening in your community at any moment.

The launch phase of any community requires someone that is passionate and “transacting” a lot. Building communities is not about collecting as many people as possible and communities often don’t grow the way they are planned. The CM role will change as the needs of the community change. This means the CM doesn’t fit into any single definition. I often refer the to the role as being similar to a liaison, bridging the gap between those inside and outside the organization.

I hope this as helped you and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

First let me tell you about Xomba. It is a web site where you can make money online by writing articles or posting bookmarks to web site. You earn a 50/50 share of the money made through Google Adsense, but you have to have an account with Adsense.

Here are my thoughts on how Xomba can increase its the number of users and thus increase its profits.

1.) Better Integration with Social Media Sites

Like most site these days Xomba has all the buttons to help users and visitors link to various social media sites, however it does not allow its writers to integrate their accounts in to their profiles on the Xomba site so that when an author makes a post it is automatically posted to their twitter, facebook status or other social sites. This simple addition will instantly increase the exposure for the writer as well as Xomba. Additionally if Xomba were to add its own URL shortener it could show click through statistics for the writers.

2.) Help Users Maximize Their Profit Potential While Using Xomba

Xomba was created to allow users to easily earn money on things they post. This brings in people with little or no experience in writing and even the use of keywords and other way of self promoting online. Xomba can add weekly, bi-weekly and Posts, Podcast and Webinars to help their users learn to be better at what they do. They can even leverage their top users to assist in these by doing interviews and having them make additional posts on being better at Xomba.

3.) Promote their “Best of the Best” and Featured Writers

The front page of the site shows Xomba Features, these are articles that seems to have received a fair bit of votes over the past few hours , however it does not mention the author and there doesn’t appear to be any place that truly promotes individual writers. Perhaps this could be integrated with the little used “Contests”. And maybe featured writers could up for special weekly, monthly and yearly awards? Who wouldn’t want to win a “Xombie of the Year” award?

Xomba also has a twitter account (@xomba) that is currently updated a few times a day. This feed could be used to instantly promote articles that get a “Featured” status and to point out writers that are really contributing to the Xomba Community. And speaking of community…

4.) Add Real Forums and Build a Community

Admittedly Xomba says it has “forums”, but really they have a feedback and suggestion tool that they are calling forums. Add some real forums and allow your users to build their own Zombie community. These forums can be used to distill ideas, collaborate and to assist new Xombites in getting familiar with Xomba. This alone can help with retention of those users who sign-up but then never make more than one or two posts. Create a “Welcome Team” and have them contact new users to see if they need help.

5.) Catch the Details

There are some things on the site that I just don’t understand and I was unable to find any info on them.

1. What are the “Points” for?
2. How does one get into the Hall of Fame?
3. Who is in the Community Think Tank and how do I contribute.
4. Contests, where are they?
5. Why not advertise that you are on Facebook and Twitter on your homepage?
6. And finally, and this is me being nit-picky, can someone please fix the broken image on the main Help page? 

Full disclosure: Xomba, a local Jacksonville startup, is looking to hire an Online PR Associate. I’ve tossed my hat in to the ring but wanted to go one step further and offer some of my thoughts on increasing the user base for the company.

Forrester’s five year forecast of B2B interactive marketing spending has gone live on the Forrester site. So, where do the B2B marketers plan to invest?

That is a 490% Increase in Social Media Spend by 2014 alone. Michael Greene even went so far as to list Social Media as one of the “few universal truths for B2B marketers”.

B2B marketers can’t ignore social media.

Consumer-focused marketers have been relatively fast out of the gate in adopting social marketing, but I believe that it’s B2B marketers who will ultimately gain the most from social technologies. B2B marketers have always understood the need to develop deeper relationships with customers, and while traditional sales and client service operations aren’t going to disappear, social media has emerged as key platform for informing decision makers during the sales process and engaging and supporting existing clients.

B2B Interactive Spend Will Double By 2014 – Forrester Research

After successfully fighting a cease and desist order by Vivendi Universal five years ago, the unofficial continuation to the King’s Quest series has been shut down for good. In 2005, fans successfully convinced Vivendi to allow the indie team behind The Silver Lining to continue development, thanks in part to a letter writing campaign. The original deal would see the game’s authorized release as part of a non-commercial fan license; however, current King’s Quest IP holder Activision has decided (after “talks and negotiations”) it is not interested in entering a similar agreement with the indie team. In 2008, Activision said it didn’t have any immediate plans to utilize the classic licenses (including King’s Quest) it received in the infamous $18 billion merger with Vivendi.

What concludes is eight long years of development by a dedicated fan base. On the fan project’s official site, a letter from the development team thanks fans for their continued support and shares its disappointment in the decision…

Now I realize that the Activision of today is not the Activision founded by former Atari programmers David Crane and Alan Miller, and Jim Levy of GRT Records. That Activision was the first Independent Developer. Before the formation of Activision in August 1979, software for video game consoles was created and published exclusively by the makers of the systems for which the games were designed. It was the programmers aggravation at not getting financial rewards for games that sold well, and not receiving credit for their games that set them on the path to becoming the first 3rd party developer.

And let’s not forget that it was a “Mom and Pop” shop that were the creators of the “King’s Quest” series. Sierra Entertainment was founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems in Los Angeles, California by Ken and Roberta Williams after Ken, a programmer for IBM, bought an Apple II which he planned to use to develop a FORTRAN compiler for Apple computers. At the time, his wife Roberta was playing text adventure games for the Apple II. Dissatisfied with the adventure games that existed at the time, she realized modern computers could display graphics and had the potential to do more than presenting text descriptions on the screen. Again an Independent Developer started by a fan of the genre.

Here is an IP which you were not and have no plans to use. IP that was so loved by fans that they worked for eight years to keep it alive and you shut it down, just because you can.

Activision, you screwed this one up.

Activision shuts down fan-made King’s Quest sequel via Joystiq

Here we are on the last day of the social media party on my blog, my Facebook Fan page and my Twitter account. The first post can be found here: Historian’s “Social Media” Party!

I’ve gotten some criticism feedback that suggests that based on this site and specifically the biography I don’t have much that really points out what I bring to “social media”. To that I would say this: “I managed to pop up on your Social radar, right?”. I don’t claim to be an “end all to be all expert”, but I do know about growing web based communities and today that means being “Social”. And I will always take criticism feedback, because I will always be growing and learning.

But as much as this IS about me, it is also about the people that came out to be a part of the Party.

El Drijver Co-Founder Firi Games www.firigames.com

When I met El he was the Lead Game Design for Spellborn Works, the design team behind the Chronicles of Spellborn. We held weekly webinars that were unrivaled in how they directly connected the gamer to the publisher and developer. It was a bold move, but it worked out great. You can find all of them over on my media site: HistoricMedia.net.  He is now starting his own studio Firi Games. Check out the first screenshots on facebook!

Binge Gamer www.bingegamer.net

Binge Gamer, founded in 2008, is not your typical gaming website. Understanding that there are already bunches of other gaming blogs that rehash press releases and game announcements, Binge Gamer aims to provide unabashed commentary on the big news stories of the day, as well as provide readers with some of the offbeat news items that you probably won’t find on some of the larger sites. The Bender podcast combines video game news, theory, reviews, opinions, and curse words :\ We’re the best, listen now.

Paddy ‘DrunkenGamer’ Fellows of www.thirteen1.com

Thirteen1 is a digital flash based magazine that brings out a new completely free issue each month – we cover a lot of the newest games as well as unique pieces such as our soundtrack reviews, rant inn & drinking games.

The Somewhat Comical Adventures of Prickley Pete! www.prickleypete.com

You may be surprised to learn that “The Somewhat Comical Adventures of Prickley Pete!” literally happened overnight. Within twelve hours of blurting out, “Hey, we should do a cartoon with Prickley Pete!” the first episode was already underway. And it will soon becoming to an Xbox 360 as a point-n-click adventure game.

The Entertainment Consumer Association www.theeca.com

The ECA is dedicated to providing a wealth of community and affinity benefits to our members.  With membership, you can connect with like-minded gaming fans, explore career and educational opportunities in the business, and more.  Membership can also provide some incredible discounts, trial offers and members-only access; many of which could rationalize the cost of member dues many times over.

If you are a gamer and spend money on enthusiast magazines, online subscriptions, or buy and rent games, these benefits make it so that you would pay far less.  New offers are posted frequently in the Benefits Section

Abel Bascuñana Pons on Facebook

My personal blog on community management, game design reviews, casual games, QA Testing and other game topics at http://stalyangames.wordpress.com/.

Shawn McBroom on Facebook

My Linkedin profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnmcbroom. I spend most of my time working or attending college. Spend my free time learning to create games and playing games.

I want to thank everyone that has joined in to be a part of this little experiment. I should have a post up this week to let you know how it all went.